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The computer that I use for fractal rendering is not in great condition right now, I'm waiting for some stuff to arrive in the mail to supe it up (a few cables, a new hard drive, a new processor, a copy of Windows 7, etc.) and was just wondering in the mean time, is rendering fractals in Windows Vista's safe mode affecting the quality of the final rendering of the images? I know that safe mode only loads essential drivers, so I'm just wondering if some of the drivers that are not loaded play a role in increasing the quality of the final image; I'm asking in relation to final renders from the Mandelbulb 3D software.

Any insight into this would be very much appreciated.

I doubt people have tried it, but maybe I'm wrong?   However, if its working for you, but the images just don't look as good, then I would assume that the graphics buffer that the image is rendered to may be limited in color depth, as safe mode is?

Yeah thats definitely a possibility I hadn't considered. It looks as though the sharpness is what's affected most. I think when I get home I'm just going to render some params with all the same settings in normal and safe mode and then compare the images. Probably the only way I'm going to get to the root of the answer.

Thanks for the input, definitely not something I had considered.

If you are looking at your generated images in safe mode, it could be the color/bit depth settings of your display. Usually when I boot into safe mode I am in 256 color mode.

Oh yeah, duh - that's probably it.  The image may have rendered fine - and you just can't see it!